


Rust & Stardust

by BoxWineConfessions



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: An ensemble fic set against the backdrop of Georgi and Mila's tumultuous relationship, Angst, F/M, Masturbation, Panty Sniffing, Pre-Cannon, but not like super angst, hints of past rape/sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-17 04:02:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11267541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/pseuds/BoxWineConfessions
Summary: As embarrassing as it is, she finds herself staring at him more and more. His body is broad and muscular in a way that many male skaters aren’t. He always wears little V neck shirts that she hates to admit are cute. He smells really nice, like hair gel, cologne, and sweat combined into something that should have been gross, but isn’t. It’s all Georgi’s fault that she starts liking him really.Mila was forgettable. He saw her as a pink backpack, bright pink flip phone, and frosty pink lip gloss all blended together as a single shade in a sea of other teenage girls at the rink.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoodleLeeDoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoodleLeeDoo/gifts).



Georgi is on break when it all goes down.

Before that very moment, he didn’t have much of an impression of her at all. Granted, he’d only met her two hours beforehand. Mila seemed to command attention in a way that made his skin crawl. She belched when she finished eating, and she picked at the beds of her nails to set off Lilia. She set Yuri Plisetsky off with minimal effort. Her jumps were lopsided, and her step sequences were sloppy. When you took away all of those sloppy features, and things that were done only to command the attention of others in a fit of desperation, Georgi thought, for all of two hours, that Mila was forgettable. For a solid two hours, he saw her as a pink backpack, bright pink flip phone, and frosty pink lip gloss all blended together as a single shade in a sea of other teenage girls at the rink.

Georgi is on break when it all goes down. He’s crafting a love poem for his muse, his life, and his love, Katya.

There’s the harsh, guttural, and gruff beyond his years sound of Yuri belting out, “Fuck you, hag.”

Followed by a girlish cry of, “Not only am I allowed to do it, I _can_ do it.”

Mila zooms past in a blur of pink and red around the corner out to the middle of the rink. She busts out a loop, with one, two, three, Georgi watches as she sinks down like a lead weight still trying to rotate another time. She lands, bounces, and shrieks when she breaks the bulk of her fall with her left arm.

The sound was immediately complimented by Yakov swearing across the rink. “Yuri! What the hell have you done?”

Followed by a cry of, “I didn’t do a goddamn thing asshole.”

Victor asks him later on when they’re all out on the ice except for Mila, who stares at them all sullenly with her arm in a plaster. “What do you think of Yakov’s little butterfly?”

Georgi answers carefully. Yakov didn’t typically take on female protégés. Yakov was old school, borderlining on piggish. He always told his students that his marriage fell apart over quads. Men’s skating was his passion, and so his students were apt to believe him…Well, at the very least, Georgi did. Yakov understood the way men’s bodies moved on ice, and how to best deal with their bravado.

She certainly didn’t make the best first impression. Her presence alone signified promise. It was clear after the “quad” incident last weekthat she could take a verbal beating. Yakov yelled at her for over an hour. She might have a shot due to that alone.

If he’d been asked _before_ the incident, he would’ve said “predictable.” Now? “Tempestuous.” Georgi doesn’t offer much more than that. He was selected to have his first Grand Prix event with Victor in France. That didn’t exactly set him up for a strong start in the season. He failed a major assignment in his advanced writing course because he went over the page limit by twenty.

* * *

It’s mid-July when she arrives in St. Petersburg. She hates it immediately. Mom came, and moved her into her host parents’ house. She learned that the godawful little boy that roomed across the hallway was also here from Moscow. He’d be her rink mate. Yakov immediately begins busting her ass about her program, saying that it’s too late for her to refine her program enough to medal. Whatever. The first Grand Prix events don’t begin until October. She has plenty of time.

There’s a girl who goes to her school that also skates at her new home rink. Sh offered to buy her an iced coffee before training, so they go to a café near the rink. It was the kind with a little green canvas awning, and impossibly small metal tables painted white.

It’s mid-July, and he wears a black wool sweater. They aren’t out on the ice.

Georgi read aloud from a mountain of papers precariously clipped together. He goes on for a few paragraphs before passing the script of to a painfully handsome platinum haired man that couldn’t have been anyone other than Victor Nikiforov.

Victor reads from the papers for awhile, adding his own comments as he goes along. “There are three typos here Georgi. This is why you failed.”

“I failed because she cannot understand my vision,” the sweaty wool clad maniac wails.

“Ah, I see,” Victor chuckles  softly.

Her rink mate explains that _that_ is Georgi Popovich, and he sometimes makes the girls at the rink a little uncomfortable. Not creepy exactly…just intense and strange. She really doesn’t care. She’s absolutely star struck that _Viktor Nikiforov_ could do anything. Laugh softly, have tea, hang out with his friends. “Our hero is about to give his audience a fine monologue,” and hands the papers back to Georgi.

Georgi jumps up onto the table and delivers his lines with a booming voice, and his arms spread wide. He startles a little old woman and a gaggle of pigeons in the process. His grin takes up the expanse of his face. He seems so happy, even though he failed.

Mila doesn’t understand, so she chases the thought from her mind and stares at Victor Nikiforv while she inhales a bubble tea and punctuates finishing it with a belch.

* * *

To Georgi, Mila very quickly becomes a girl who follows Victor around like a lost puppy. There’s nothing quite like the interactions between them that initiate Yakov’s progression from normal, to red, to purple, and then throbbing vein personified quite like the two of them. Of course, it’s all fueled by the fact that Victor is _usually_ all too willing to indulge.

At times, it’s a bit much, even for Georgi who knows what people think of him.

“Ah, you want to see how it’s done again? Okay.” Victor goes into an Ina Bauer, and then suggests something legitimately to Mila, “It’s easier to start in another position, like this.” Then, he lifts his leg backward. “And then, up.”

 He does this despite knowing that the girl has been able to do a Bielman for years. He does this knowing that he himself has not been able to do one in years. Victor _usually_ indulges her with a smile.

_Usually._

There are moments were he responds to her requests coolly. “I don’t think showing you a lift will actually help you with that spin, Mila.”

Georgi’s opinion of Mila changes for a second time not long after she gets the plaster removed. Georgi knows for a fact that she’s often late for physical therapy, simply because Yakov audibly complains about it several times a week.

It’s late, long after Victor, Yakov and everyone else had left the rink. Georgi likes to take a minute after practice ends, to calm his mind. In his journal, he writes about how he feels on the ice, and off of it. He makes note of any particular interaction or energy that might have affected his skating that day.

His gear and his books make him feel overburdened. Earlier that day, he checked out a small mountain of materials in order to make sure that his next paper for class was well researched and perfect.

The lights for the rink were dim, and maintenance would soon be in to treat the ice and vacuum. His feet shuffle against the gray green carpet. His playlist of possible exhibition skate songs were on, and in his mind he could hear Yakov all but begging him to focus on his program before he even thought about exhibitions.

The song is interrupted by a _crash,_ and then a _bang._ Immediately it registers as the sound of something heavy hitting the lockers in the lobby available for public skaters.

Georgi undoes his earbud while scrambling around the corner to intervene. His jaw drops when he sees Mila bunched up, as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible. Her fists are clenched tightly. Her hair cascades down around her face blocking it from view, but the soft sobbing sounds she makes fill in the gap. In front of her, crumpled on the floor is a boy.

Georgi is hesitant to use that term. Even in his crumpled position on the floor he looks impossibly tall, and heavier than both of them combined. Only the logo on his juniors team jersey indicates he was at least Mila’s age or younger.

* * *

Mila _knows_ that she’s the one who punched the guy when he tried to stick his hands down her pants, but it feels like she’s the one coming to from a harsh blow. She opens her eyes slowly, and with a dozen or so rapid blinks, her vision focuses in. She looks at her own hand covered in blood above the white porcelain bathroom sink. A long, thin, spiderlike set f fingers tests the tap water to make sure that the water isn’t too warm, and isn’t too cold. The hand envelops her hand, and shoves it underneath the tap.

“If you’re not going to do anything about it, I’ll keep doing something about it.” It takes her a minute to understand that curt and abrasive voice was attached to the man who keeps her hand held underneath the water. She looks into the mirror, and saw her own eyes go wide at the sight of her disheveled appearance. Her jacket is wrinkled. Her hair is mussed, and her face is swollen and red from crying. It all comes back to her in an instant, and she realizes with horror that the blood was not her own.

“No, she didn’t do it. I did. I stepped in,” his voice is ragged. The usual bravado in his voice is still present, but it’s stripped raw and roughed up. She can feel him tremble as he rinses the blood off of her. “I’m telling you Yakov, she didn’t do it. I did it. I stepped in, and I defended a girl from being exploited.”

She looks past herself, and sees him in the mirror. His phone is balanced between his chin and his shoulder. It’s Georgi. She doesn’t know him very well despite having the same coach. It feels like she was seeing him for the very first time. His hair is damp and set free from its wax and gel prison. He’s not quoting poetry or reading from a script.

She can hear her own heart shake in her chest. She could hear Yakov’s voice on the other end of the line.

“I KNOW that’s a goddamn lie Popovich you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn-“

Georgi let go of her hand so he could end the call. He grabs a fistful of paper towels from the sink. He dries her hand. He took more towels, wet them, and washes off her face. It feels so mechanical and cold, despite the look of deep concern, _pity_ in his eyes.

She wants, so desperately, to push him away. But she let him tend to her, as if she were truly helpless. He looks so genuine, she’ll let him pretend as if she hadn’t done the same thing to at least a half dozen other boys back home over the years.

“Mila,” his tone is soft, and so different from the deep booming voice he normally used. “Dear. Are you okay?”

She cannot bring herself to speak.

“Yakov will see to it that he’s gone.” He tucks her hair behind her ear. She flinches. He flinches too, as if he just remembered what she’d gone through. “Can I walk you home? Or, if you take the train, can I take the train home with you?”

“I’m not going home right now,” she chokes. She didn’t have the slightest idea where she would’ve went if she went anywhere else, but she feels physically unable to deal with Yuri swearing at her for simply existing. She mere thought of Yuri stomping up and down the hallway made her head pound. She would have to explain to her host parents why her face was all fucked up from crying.

* * *

Georgi understands that bringing her back to his apartment is one of the stupidest thigs he could’ve ever done. A distraught fifteen year old had no business being in his apartment. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to process that information and enact it.

Mila spreads out on his sofa as if she owns the place, and drinks his orange juice straight from the carton.

“You should try to eat something,” he says trying to make dinner for two out of ingredients he’d planned and weighted out that morning for one.

“I’m not hungry,” she supplies too quickly. Then, she added, “I bet you think you’re some kind of hero.”

Georgi doesn’t respond. It’s not the kind of thing that is meant to be responded to. He understands that.

Mila watches cartoons well after he finishes his readings for class the next day. Her expression is dull and disinterested. She doesn’t so much as touch any of her food when Georgi is ready for bed just after midnight.

Georgi wraps it in saran wrap, brings her a change of clothes: a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt. Then he announces, “I’m going to bed. You can stay, but if you leave lock the door.”

Georgi can’t fall asleep that night. He isn’t used to the sound of the television being on in another room.

Worse still, Georgi wakes up up at 6:30 in the morning to the sound of cartoons still pouring in from the living room, and six missed calls from Yakov. In the muted light of morning, Cheburashka frolics on the screen. Mila didn’t put the clothes on he gave her last night. She lays on her stomach with her shirt rucked high. Her pants are in a crumpled pile on the floor. Light from the window shines in onto the bare skin of her back and dapples it with little rays.

Her smooth, muscular legs are exposed, and these swaths of luxurious skin are interrupted only by a small stripe of fabric, bright pink trimmed with day glow green lace.

Mentally, Georgi orders himself to tear his eyes away. He ignores the order over, and over and over again, as he cannot bear to look away, even if his life depended upon it. Instead of looking away, like a normal person, he begins bargaining with himself immediately. He insists silently that he pursues women, and not girls. There is nothing attractive or to be romanticized about the way that her backpack is burdened with brightly colored plastic keychains. There is nothing desirable in the way that she reads Cosmopolitan magazine, and asks him and Victor to buy her wine.

He insists all of this of course, while his body betrays him.

In the shower, after the water has run cold and his cock was milked dry he silently admonishes himself for being no better than the boy that Mila decked yesterday.

* * *

Mila considers going back home a lot her first few months in St. Petersburg. Training full time isn’t much different than at home. At home she wakes up, she milks cows, she collects eggs, she goes to school, she tries not to fall asleep, and then she tends animals all over again.

In St. Petersburg, she wakes up. She pushes Yuri out of the way so she can brush her teeth. She does an off ice session where Yuri inevitably pushes her back. She goes to school and tries to not get caught sleeping through math. She goes to practice, and then she tries to force herself to eat something and not throw it back up again.

That happens a lot when she first comes to St. Petersburg. She wakes up too early, and can never keep her breakfast down. At night, when she looks over her homework and none of it makes any sense, that makes her queasy too.

Georgi is kind of lame. Georgi is kind of a fucking mess in a way that she didn’t know that adult athletes could be. As embarrassing as it is, she finds herself staring at him more and more. His body is broad and muscular in a way that many male skaters aren’t. He always wears little V neck shirts that she hates to admit are cute. He smells really nice, like hair gel, cologne, and sweat combined into something that should have been gross, but isn’t.

It’s all Georgi’s fault that she starts liking him really.

Georgi waits for her to come out of the locker room now. They’re always the last ones. He always makes it look like he’s doing something else, ending a call, or texting or reading. Wordlessly, he walks her to the bus stop, and then when she gets there, he walks onward. The entire time her heart pounds so loudly that it rattles her chest and makes her ears feel like something is roaring into them.

When she tries to speak it’s always something lame like, “guys normally don’t do this for me unless we’re going out.”

Georgi, is always brisk and sincere with her. With furrowed brow, and clenched jaw he always says, “Please tell Yakov if there is any trouble. Or,” he stops for a moment, as if he needs to finish his thought. “Tell me if you don’t want to go to him first.”

“You gonna beat ‘em up for me Georgi?” Despite the fact that Georgi is  _so_  serious all of the time, it's never tense. That would require for someone to take him seriously, which she doesn't. 

“I do not fight for women’s honor with my fists.”

“Do you prefer your wits Georgi?” He’s always reciting poetry.

Gerorgi winces at _just_ how lame she sounds.  

It doesn’t matter if the bus has just pulled out of the station, if it’s running late, or it’s there waiting already. He always waits with her. Mila smiles and buries her hands in her face whenever she sees Georgi walking in the opposite direction towards his own, east bound stop.

* * *

 

Breaks aren’t really breaks at all for Yuri, Mila, and Georgi who are all still in school. Breaks are for trying to learn something. Breaks are for holding a book and praying that some of it transferred through your brain via skin conductance.

They all sit in a circle with their legs splayed wide and books in between. Yuri’s face is smashed into the book. It looks like he’s sleeping.

“Aren’t you a little old to still be in college?”

“It’s taken me awhile to finish?”

“Cause you fail all the time” She taunts. She knows Georgi didn’t do so well on some kind of exam. He was crying about it yesterday. That’s pretty normal. He feels a lot of feelings. She kind of secretly understands. Her grades have tanked since she moved here.

“No, I changed my major a few times. I wanted to do theater and be an actor,” he waves his hands about, and does some kind of pose. It’s a very Georgi pose. His eyes look like bright little light bulbs and his arms stretched wide as if he were holding some kind of grand weight. “But I’m too busy with skating to do plays too. Then I did dance for a while, but I didn’t get anything out of it that our lessons couldn’t do. Again, I couldn’t do shows with the skating season either.”

“So, what now?” Not that she cares. It’s just that her mom calls when she sees her grades and asks if she’s thought about college.

Next time, she can say that she has.

“Creative writing,” followed up quickly by, “What are you reading?”

Mila shoves the book with a glossy laminate cover into his hands. This is perfect. She doesn’t even have to bring it up, but make it seem like it’s his idea.

“Hamlet? I love this one!”

“It’s so boring,” she slumps over, in a near perfect mimicry of Yuri.

Georgi flips open the book to the page that’s marked. “Of course it is, if you just read it silently. Do it differently.”

“No.” _Please_ , she needs to ace the next reading quiz.

Georgi hops up from his spot, and begins reading. His voice is high pitched as he does the voice of the queen, “Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me,” and then his voice goes low pitched to do the voice of Hamlet, “No, good mother. Here’s metal more attractive,” he jumps over near Mila, and sits back down on the ground.

Yuri stirs from his nap, “Hey asshole, keep it down.”

Georgi reads dutifully from the script, “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” before offering the book to her.

“Fuck no!” She squeals.

“Do you think I meant country matters?”

“I think you’re a fucking weirdo.”

Georgi thrusts the book at her. “That’s not your line Ophelia, and I’m not just going to put on a one man show for you. I’m ill prepared.”

She takes the book back, “So I’m the chick.”

“Yes, Ophelia!” He says enthusiastically.

“I think nothing, my lord.” She reads in a morose tone. It gets worse from there. She has to take over the queen’s voice, to act as a foil for Georgi.

“My head upon thy lap?” Georgi leans into her shoulder and nuzzles her. It makes her giggle, and push him over onto the rubber matted ground, designed for absent minded skaters who forget their blade guards.

Georgi gets into it and walks through the bleachers to represent a brooding Hamlet, and he jumps own several at a time to land at her feet. It makes her screech and laugh with delight.

It makes Yuri curse and swear, and that makes her laugh even more.

* * *

 

“Look dude, I don’t think she wants to talk.” Georgi stares at his phone. The faint, muffled sound of Katya’s voice can be hear even thogh he’s pulled back from the phone. “I’m sorry, I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m probably skating!”

“She has some of my favorite books,” Georgi wilts as he hits the “end” button. She’s not been at the rink lately either.

“Wait, is Katya the one you bought a bracelet for at Tiffany’s?”

“Yes?” Georgi’s voice inflects upward in confusion. He’d mentioned it to Victor maybe, but didn’t talk about it directly to her.

“I’ll ignore you for a Tiffany bracelet Georgi!” Then she adds, “What did you bring me today. I’m hungry.”

It’s no secret that the girl won’t take interest in something unless Yuri does to spite her, or it’s something that he’s vaguely interested in. Her fleeting affections are endearing, and just that. Fleeting. Georgi cannot pay attention to the wavering wants of a woman. She’ll be playful, friendly even for a time, and then cold to him within the same breath.

“I don’t bring food for you Mila. I bring food for myself to give _me_ energy because I have routines to perfect, masterpieces to write, work on shifting the entire paradigm of men’s skating and-Hey!”

She’s diving into his bag for a cliff bar. It makes Georgi smile. From the corner of his eye, Yuri is inhaling a protein shake. He wonders if their opinions of one another would improve or worsen if they knew how similar they were.

Mila wolfs down the protein bar. Yakov calls an end to break. They drift back out on the ice.

“What’s a paradigm? It sounds really awful.”

“An exemplar,” Georgi pontificates. “A model, the way things are. So a paradigm shift would of course be,”

“A change.”

“Precisely.”

“So a paradigm shift in skating would be if girls lifted boys in pairs.”

“I don’t think that is possible based on muscle density and body mass and-“ Georgi feels the air leave his lungs as if he’s been punched. His skates leave the ice, but not the collected and calculated way that they do when he does a jump. It feels uncontrolled  disjointed. He can feel anxiety swell in his throat.

“What were you saying?” Her arms are around her waist. His chest is tilted so that her chin digs into his sternum. He can’t see her face, but her muffled voice makes it sound like she’s smiling.

Georgi holds his breath, honestly believing that if he exhaled too hard she would drop him. Georgi holds his breath, because if he focuses on how badly his brain needs oxygen, he won’t be able to think about the way that Mila smells like _girl_. Cucumber melon, and sticky lip gloss, and cheap mismatched foundation.

Later, Victor asks him, “what do you think if I changed the step sequence to something a little more?” Victor weaves in-between the low benches in the locker room. His whole body moves in perfect time to music that only Victor can hear.

“I like the way you spread your arms out like wings,” Georgi responds. It’s unlike Victor to solicit another’s opinion on choreography. He must be troubled.  

“Speaking of wings,” Victor breaks pose to tap his finger against his mouth in thought. It seems like Yakov’s ugly little worm is transforming into a beautiful little butterfly. She lifted you up like it was nothing, and then finally landed her jumps in routine.”

Georgi feels the air get knocked out of his lungs again for a second time. Then, Victor suggests that they go cruising down by the university over drinks. The feeling is fleeting, just like Mila’s warmth and misguided affection.

* * *

 

Mila turns sixteen without ceremony or incident. She gets a call from her parents at the ass crack of dawn before they go out to do the milking and the mucking. They ask her if she’s eating, and she says “yes” this time. It’s mostly the truth. She eats a lot of cereal without milk.

 They tell her that they’re proud of her for improving her grades, especially in literature, and she believes them this time.

Her host mom gives her a card over breakfast.

It’s an okay, perfectly normal day. Yakov doesn’t yell at her much. She lands most of her jumps. Victor tells her that she’s doing a good job. She notices that she doesn’t really care so much. Maybe it’s because Georgi shows her a shortcut on how to solve algebra problems, and tells her “that lip stain pairs well with your nail polish.”

It’s great, until Yuri blurts out in front of everyone, “Mila’s such a hag now. Old as fuck.”

“Happy birthday Mila! We should sing!” Victor chirps.

“In the key of,” Georgi interjects.

But Victor carries on in an off key tune. Georgi has no choice but to join in with him. Yuri refuses to join in, except for the part where they say her name, and he screams “hag” instead.

It makes Mila want to curl up into the nearest corner and die. She can feel her face grow hot, and bright red like a fresh pot of borscht on the stove. She hates every second of it.

It gets worse. Or better, depending on how she decides to look at it. Mila decides that it’s both.

The next day, she and Georgi are the last ones out of the locker room like always. “Mila,” his voice is smooth like fresh ice, and just as inviting. “It’s not your birthday anymore, and it might be bad luck, but I didn’t know in advance. Yuri said that you didn’t really have time to do anything to celebrate.”

Mila looks down, and he’s holding a little glass dish with a red plastic lid in his hands. He hands it over to her.

Mila peels back the lid to find a half-dozen or so cupcakes tightly crammed into the container.

“Have some with me?” Her heart pounds in her chest while she talks.

“It’s your cake Mila.”

“Well I’m not bringing this home to share with Yuri. I won’t get any. We should both eat some.”

They sit on the gray molded chairs with dark green velour like backing. Mila has to mentally make herself slow down every single action. Peel back the wrapper slowly. Lick the frosting first to prevent cramming the whole thing into her mouth at once. Lap up the icing that doesn’t make it into her face because she’s so hungry she’s almost dizzy. Then, she takes a bite. Then another, and another, wolfishly. Yuri’s bad habits are wearing off on her.

Georgi picks gingerly at the cake. He eats it like someone with manners should eat.

Mila grabs another cupcake. She should probably try to eat the actual nutritious dinner that she knows her host mom has made, but this is really good. Like it _actually_ tastes good, and nothing tastes good in St. Petersburg.

“Thanks,” she says finally. “What did you do for your sixteenth birthday? Read a monologue? Get your nails done at the salon?” She’d seen him at the acrylic nail salon the other day getting a manicure. She made sure to smash her face up against the window and pound on it until he looked up at her in horror.

“Afraid not. My parents both had to work late, and I had skating practice the next day.”

“Harsh,” she finds herself thinking that about the guy a lot. Like some of it he asks for. For example, he asks to get mocked endlessly when he says he’s going to cause a _paradigm shift. S_ he’s still not sure what that even means. He deserves that. But it seems as if there’s a lot of it that he doesn’t bring on himself. Like getting dumped, or having parents that are too busy to celebrate his birthday or whatever. “Thank you,” she says after she rinses her hands off in the sink.

“Of course. Every girl should be treated like a princess for her birthday. I’m sorry we didn’t do more.”

It’s interesting. How he says _we_ insinuating Victor and Yuri and maybe even Yakov, but he’s the only one that bothered to do anything.

Georgi walks her to the bus stop, which means that it’s time for something stupid to fall out of her mouth. The fall air is crisp, and the sun has turned the sky into orange red fire. It tugs at her stomach, and makes her gaze linger too long on Georgi’s body.

“You should give me a birthday kiss.”

Georgi chuckles, and lets her down easily. “It’s not your birthday anymore Mila.”

* * *

 

“Ah, how long are you going home for Christmas?”

“I’m not,” Mila says with a deadpan expression. “I failed math, and Yakov is making me take an intensive course while everyone else is on break.”

“No break, even for Christmas?”

“Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I could go home, but no one would be there for me anyway. My parents are taking a cruise or something. My brother is studying in America right now. It makes no difference.” She continues on without even being prompted. “Yuri has to stay too, which makes it worse. He failed science, and math.”

Without thinking, Georgi gives her the key to his apartment under the guise of asking her to collect his mail and water his plants while he’s visiting with his new girlfriend and her parents in Sochi.

* * *

 

Mila burns a can of condensed soup the first night she stays in Georgi’s apartment. She throws away he pan in the dumpster. The smell of burned tefflon makes her dry heave in the alley out by his apartment complex.

By the second night, she has the takeout number all but memorized. He has a couch, but it’s one of the _artsy_ an modern kind that aren’t really for hanging out on and decaying into for hours on end. Not that it matters. He doesn’t own a television.

So Mia overwaters his plants, and then eats Dim Sum in bed. The sheets smell like his brand of shampoo and laundry detergent. She knows this from sneaking up on him and hoisting him high into the air

It’s a good way to get Georgi to shut the fuck up whenever he won’t stop talking.

The first night, she just goes to sleep. She buries her face into his pillows and inhales deeply. It’s the best night of sleep she’s had since she move to St. Petersburg almost a little over a year ago.

The second night, it’s like normal. In the dark the unfamiliar furniture casts scary dark shadows. The scent of Georgi’s detergent is overwhelming. Her pajama pants are too tight, and feel too hot even though she turned the heater off hours ago. Mila sheds her pajama pants, and then shoves her hands down the waistband of her faded cotton panties. She doesn’t even stop to think about whether it’s wrong or if it’s right.

The next night, Sven comes over. She gets Dim Sum delivered again and lies to the guy she’s talking to. She says it’s Victor’s apartment. He knows Victor, and he knows that Victor is gay.

In Georgi’s bed, Sven pulls her panties down around her ankles and rubs is cock against her slit. Everything is fine, until the very last minute when she tenses up and pushes him away.

He pulls his pants on and leaves immediately.

* * *

 

On New Year’s Eve, Georgi returns to his apartment in St Petersburg without a girlfriend. His cupboards are bare, his mailbox is overflowing, and his plants are over watered.

He finds a late Christmas gift in his bed too. It’s already unwrapped.

Mila is sleeping in his bed, despite the fact that he told her when his flight would be in and when he anticipated being home.

She likes to cut shirts short so that they show the flat and the muscle of her stomach.  She’s wearing one such shirt now. It’s rucked even higher still, so that it shows the soft curve of her breasts, and a flash of pink nipple.

Georgi goes to pour himself a scotch from the glass decanter that he keeps on the highest shelf in his kitchen only to find it completely emptied by his house sitter.  He sits on the couch numbly, and thinking only of the soft pink skin only a room away.

He’s interrupted, “hey. Thanks for letting me crash here. It was nice to get away from Yuri for a bit. Host parents too.”

Her book bag is swung over his shoulder. She slams the door on her way out.

Later that night, his bare toes hit something scratchy. Immediately it registers in his mind as lace.

Georgi extracts a pair of lapis colored lace underwear. They’d match her eyes if she were wearing them.

Georgi is vulnerable and nothing more. Georgi likes women who wear designer clothes, and know the difference between a Malbec and a Merlot. He likes women. Not girls of barely sixteen.  Of course, Georgi tells himself all of this while he’s got her blue underpants balled up in his fist. He presses them to his nose, and he inhales deeply. He works his cock in an impossibly tight fist. He spills into her panties only to bury his face into the pillows in shame to find that they too smell like citrus body wash.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Mila makes a friend. Not like the girls at the rink who talk to her at the rink, but never invite her to go shopping. Not like the way Victor is “a friend” and shows her choreography when Yakov is too busy being angry about nothing. Not in the way that she hates Yuri a little less. He still growls at her for things like breathing too loudly, or walking into the same room as him, but she makes up for it by pouring cold water in on him while he showers, and repeating the things that he says in his sleep to Georgi and Victor. Mila makes a friend, but the guys that pick her up from the rink, and drop her off ninety minutes later when she won’t put out. Not like the way Georgi Popovich is…What the hell is Georgi?

He knows too much to be a friend. He’s too nice to be a boyfriend.

Celeste is in her ballet class. She’s twenty-one and does floor routine sometime and rhythm dancing all the time. She almost made it to the Olympics at Sochi. She’s cool in a way that Mila is not. She fucks women and dates men. She has has the men pick her up in their little sport cars. She has tattoos, and has her ears pierced three times.

For some reason, she likes Mila.

At ballet practice, Mila struggles to hold her pose. She ate some oatmeal this morning, with peanut butter and almond milk and everything. Her host mom was so proud. Now she struggles to keep it down.

Celeste asks her “wanna go to a thing?” and of course that forces her to shake off the nausea and quickly answer, “yes!”

Mila has to take the train to meet them. Celeste lives on the other side of town. Her boyfriend’s car is only a two seater.

* * *

Georgi’s sister called him sometime after the first Grand Prix event and said that if he didn’t grow a sense of optimism, and cage some of his histrionic tendencies, he was going to get a tumor.

Georgi promptly ignored this until he received international attention for falling to his knees in the middle of an interview and quoting some novel he’d read, and having the whole thing grossly misinterpreted by the press.

So his mother called him and said to get his act together, or she was going to have an aneurism.

So, Georgi tries to see things positively despite the fact that it _feels_ as if his whole world is unraveling around him rapidly. After a few successful dates, Natalie dumped him. That’s fine. It’s really better to know these things early on, because they’ll hurt so much less. He knows this, but it _hurts_ especially since his wounds were still fresh from Katya. He’s wounded, but not down for the count. No, he is more like a phoenix rising from the ashes. He’ll conquer.

In reality, he really wanted to cancel his plans with Victor.  Then, Victor showed up at his apartment, and made him put on a fresh shirt.

He’s a phoenix none the less.

He just changed his status on social media, but he won’t have to change it, just hide it for awhile, and then change it after everyone has gotten used to him not posting pictures with her.

Really, being out with Victor and his boyfriend Dimitri is fine, because they are both nice people. It’s just a movie, so he really doesn’t have to watch them look lovingly into one another’s eyes anyway.

It’s fine because-

Victor interrupts his internal monologue. “Mila!” He beams. “Let’s go sit next to Mila and her friend.”

Georgi’s first thought is to sprint across the theater and burst through the emergency fire door. It seems like the best and most viable course of action. Georgi really doesn’t want to be around her when he’s emotionally compromised. He makes the worst of decisions whenever she’s around and he’s recently broken up with someone. He doesn’t want to be around her when she’s wearing a wine colored crop top, and dark lipstick. He doesn’t want to be around her when the film is rated 18+, and titled _Flesh._

So of course, Victor seats him right next to her. He calls him out when he tries to sit on the other side of Dimitri. “Georgi, you can’t sit over there and leave Mila feeling lonely.

Mila likes Georgi because he gives her attention. It’s just that simple. Victor won’t indulge her unless she presents it in the form of a technical question. Georgi on the other hand will give her attention, affection really…with minimal effort.

Sitting next to Victor, Dimitri, and Georgi is fine. More than fine. Georgi smells like cloves next to her. He keeps stealing furtive glances at her throughout the movie. His eyes feel like a static filled wool sweater on her skin.

Sitting next to Georgi feels normal. They’re two sore thumbs that stick out. They’re two patterns that clash with the rest. Wedged between two happy couples, they’re two singular and lonely people…It feels normal, until Victor and Dimitri, and Celeste and Sven make her skin crawl more than Georgi’s hungry stare ever could. Then it’s just her and Georgi in the middle of the two couples pawing at one another.

Oh yeah, and apparently, because they don’t teach you this out in the wheat fields, “art house,” is a synonym for “softcore.” Mila is uncertain of the plot. The dialogue meanders back and forth between Russian and unsubtitled Uzbek.

Right now there are two shirtless women on the screen kissing. Minutes ago there were a man and a woman. Although the camera was only showing the from the waist up, the grunts and the stunted dialogue and the shaky frame made it very explicit that they were fucking.

The sticky sounds from the film blend in with the sticky sounds of their company mauling each other.

She really wants to grab Georgi, and do the same. He’d probably melt into her, with the way he’s looking at her…But in a way, she wants to be better than them. Be better with him.

Mila leans over and whispers into his ear, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Okay,” Georgi whispers into her ear. It makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

* * *

 

The walk to the metro station is quiet. It stayed quiet until Mila started talking, and couldn’t stop.

Georgi swipes his metro card, and then hands it to her as he walks through the turnstile.

“Georgi?”

“Yes dear?” He pauses to put the card back into his wallet.

“Back when…Back then…Why did you lie to Yakov?” It was something that could’ve easily created more problems than it solved. Back home people kept to themselves. They didn’t stick their necks out for other people if it was unnecessary. It didn’t make sense for Georgi to step that far out of line, even with his gentlemanly nature.

“Mila,” He looks at the ground as she walks through the turnstile.  His jaw is set firm, but his eyes are downcast. “You’ve been here for awhile. Almost a year now. But it seems like you’re having a hard time. I’d like to know what it is I could do to help you, but I just keep-”

Mila looks at him in disgust. “I didn’t ask for help Georgi.” She follows him through the terminal none the less.

Georgi chuckles. “But wouldn’t it be nice to get some? Not everyone is like Victor with millionaire parents. Not everyone is little Lord Plisetsky, born with a divine talent.”

“What the do you know about me?” Mila answers her own question, “nothing. You don’t know anything about milking cows out in the middle of nowhere, and coming here, and living with a god awful brat.”

“Cows?” Georgi waves his hand dismissively. “Not a thing. But I do know about the struggle of the unskilled laborer, and the all day, every day uphill battle of the iron worker, and the brick layer, and the machine operator in St. Petersburg.” Georgi gets a bit emotional when he thinks of his family and remembers papa in his thick, soot covered coveralls. Georgi knows that he’s gesticulating wildly with his hands as he talks, but it’s amazing really. He’s here and they’re there, and he can do what he does.

“Okay comrade,” she says with a snort.

“I understand though. Insufferable housemate.”

“You don’t get it. You get to leave him behind when practice is done.”

“As for insufferable housemates, when I was sixteen, Victor and I moved to the athletic dorms together.”

“Yeah, but,” the train pours into the station, creating a wind tunnel at the platform. Her hair blows away from her face like a dried dandelion in spring. He can barely hear her against the clatter of the train, “You like Victor.”

As they board, he laughs again. “Perhaps your perception of Plisetsky will change.” He pauses, then adds, “At first it was not ideal. Victor excelled at everything. I had my growth spurt first, and my first year in senior division was awful. We’re the same age too you know, born a day apart. Less than a day. His mom called, and kept asking questions and we narrowed it down to about twelve hours.”

Mila raises a brow at him. She’s still not sure how she’s supposed to respond to that kind of thing. Georgi doesn’t _seem_ touchy about it, which is strange because everything is touchy with Georgi. His favorite skates were delayed in being sharpened earlier in the week, and Yakov had to bully him to even get him on the ice. Things had to be a _certain_ kind of way, and if they weren’t he lost it.

“I was better at him in school, but no one seemed to notice.

The train rattles and shakes as it leaves the station. Georgi grabs onto two straps and raises his knees so that the hangs between them, tests his weight, and then lifts himself upward as if he were on gymnastic rings.

“What made things change?” She finally asks.

Mila loops her own hands into the straps, and not to be outdone, she lifts herself up a well. They’re _almost_ alone in the car, but certainly earning disapproving looks from the older women in the front end of the car. The sallow yellow hue of the cabin lights make everything look blurred and imprecise, including her mouth when she moves to speak.

“I realized it would make my life easier if we were friends. It did. We get along really well.”

“Uh-huh” Mila’s canvas sneaker sheathed feet come in contact with the seats in front of her. Her body stays awkwardly suspended between the straps and the seats. “I really hate it here. The food tastes awful, and the people suck.” She makes it a point to flash him a big toothy grin while she says it.

Georgi doesn’t say anything else to her on the train ride.

* * *

 

It is assumed, by both of them really, that she’s coming back to his apartment after they ditch the movie. Georgi doesn’t suggest anything else. There’s a clammy lingering feeling at the base of his neck that suggests that he should’ve suggested something else: ice cream, or a sandwich, or something like that.

There’s a part of his brain that says he should call the whole thing off and get her onto a red line train.

There’s a part of him that says that’s the worst idea he’s ever had. Georgi looks at her in the dim, washed out lighting of the train car. Her lips are pouty and thoroughly shellacked in a dark red color. He and decides then and there that everything beforehand had been leading up to this moment. Every time Mila lifted him high, every time that he read from her literature book, and every time that he ended up seeing something he “shouldn’t have” pulled them both forward to this moment. Although the circumstances were imperfect, he was helpless. She was helpless. The apprehension couldn’t be banished completely, but it was going to happen nonetheless.

Mila immediately goes to his fridge. She eats two bowls of cereal, and all of his fruit.

Georgi pours himself a glass of wine. This particular bottle was procured from his latest showing at Trophee De France. It cost sixty euros. Georgi agitates the wine, smells it, and takes the first sip. It’s worth every cent.

“I want some,” Mila decides while she peels a banana. She struggles to remove the peel completely. He’d just gone to the market and it’s still a little green. Why she’ll eat under ripe fruit, but not the food that Lilia brings to them for practice is beyond his imagination. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it is his, and by extension she wants whatever it is that he has. Even green, under ripe bananas are desirable when they’re his.

“Dearest,” Georgi doesn’t for a moment regret his choice of words, but drains the wine in his own glass. When he looks at her, in red wine colored lace, and a silken ribbon tied around her neck, he sees woman. When he hears her talk, and watches her eat, and sees her chipped nail polish, he sees a child.

“Don’t feel like you have to say something. We both know what’s going on here,” she interrupts.

The statement; and it’s a statement, not a question, hangs thickly between them in the air. With Georgi on one side of the kitchen island, and Mila on the other, and nothing but a smooth marble table top in between.

“I suppose you’re right. I just wouldn’t want to assume.”

“Assume.”  Mila says as she pours herself a generous amount of wine, not into one of the long stemmed crystal glasses that he keeps in the cabinet, but in one of his onyx colored coffee mugs.

Georgi, in parallel with her actions goes to the cabinet, extracts another long stemmed wine glass, and pours most of her mug into the stemmed glass, the rest of the liquid from the mug into his own topping it off. “It was expensive, love.”

Georgi doesn’t miss the way that her cheeks tinge pink with blush when he says it. Their fingers brush briefly when he passes the glass back to her. It shouldn’t be this easy, to treat her this way. But Mila tugs at his heat in two opposing directions. The first, as a beautiful flower that needs to be protected from being plucked off the branch. The second, reminds him that with Natalie gone, he has a beautiful crystal vase that needs to be filled. “Would you like to sit outside?”

Georgi leads her by the elbow to the balcony. He grabs a throw off the back of the sofa, opens the door for her, and wraps her up in the throw. Then, he joins her on the loveseat. She tucks her feet up under her body, so that her toes, just barely graze his thigh.

His flat offers an adequate view of the monastery. He used to think that it was absolutely grand until he went up to Victor’s flat on Nevetsky avenue and saw the view. From Victor’s living room one could see the rounded dome and the accompanying buildings.

It’s quiet between them for the longest time. The noise of the city below acts as a reluctant chaperone to the two of them. Light pollution from the city, above and below blocks out the stars, and the moon, and anything that may be considered natural.

“So, why do you date such mean bitches?”

“Mila, I date elegant young women.” Gerorgi agitates the wine, raises it the faint light of the city lights and the stars, and watches the legs of the wine creep down the interior of the glass. “My misfortune stems from my unquenchable desire for women who-“

Mila interrupts him. “You bought Elizaveta a stationary set and a silver pen. She never wrote you back.”

Georgi opens his mouth to respond, but she presses on.

“You bought Natalie a new laptop, and new software. She _just_ dumped you. There was that chick you took cooking classes for, because she had so many allergies and you couldn’t go out to eat anywhere. What’s wrong with you?”

The question makes Georgi’s skin itch in the worst kind of way. He knows that it’s a culmination of factors, many of which that are all but tangible in the here and now as he sits with Mila. It doesn’t stop him from perpetuating and enacting each and every single one as he presses forward, desperate for temporary relief from the great black cloud that shrouds him constantly.

“Why all the different men?” Georgi takes her foot into his hand carefully, he extracts the thin white sock from her foot by pulling it away by the light pink band at the toes. He watches her face for a sign of discomfort, any indication that whatever it was between them should stop. He examines her foot for a moment. Her littlest toes are red and calloused and blistered. She has lace bite on her ankles. Georgi presses the pad of his thumb into the soft and exposed flesh of the arch of her foot, and the sound that Mila makes is divine.

“Ah,-“ She screws her eyes shut and writhes in her seat.

“Too much?”

“No. Its good, but-“

“Hurts a little too?” Georgi knows this. Not only because he seeks to be a man who teaches her something about her own body, but also because he knows this all too well. His own feet ache. When they are touched like this, he burns and begs for more despite the agony.

She nods. “You’re such a fucking fair weather friend Georgi,” she says, changing the subject.  “Or maybe the opposite. A bad weather friend. You only want anything to do with me when you’ve just been dumped.”

“Mila.” There’s nothing _wrong_ about what she’s saying. “I _always_ walk you to the station. I _always_ help with your courses.”

Mila’s eyes flutter closed mid eye roll as he applies more pressure to the ball of her foot. “You know what I mean Georgi,” She says in a voice that’s husky.

Georgi responds in kind, “I see them. With their platinum cards, and their sports cards. I know I’m not special.”

Mila grabs her glass of wine, takes a large mouthful, so much so that her cheeks bulge. She swallows. In a split second, her tongue darts out to collect the drops of wine on her lips. “People your age know how to fuck.”

Georgi laughs. He laughs while he alternates between soft circles and deep presses into the sole of her foot. He savors each twitch of her mouth, and each gasp, and the way that her entire expression tenses and softens over, and over, and over again. “Mila,” he tries to keep his voice steady, he tries not to tease, because it isn’t _really_ her fault. She doesn’t know any better.  “They don’t know a damn thing about anything.”

He of course, knows what comes next. It’s familiar in their push-push back-push again relationship. She drains the rest of her wine. The first of her syllables spill out when he’s removing her other sock from her left foot. “You gonna show me?”

Georgi cannot respond right away. What happens next is anything but making love, but he wants to be remembered as above and beyond any brute of a man that comes before or after him.

“What do you think Mila?” In that moment, he bares down on her foot, and drags the pads of both thumbs from the heel to the ball of her foot. He fans the pads of his thumbs in opposite directions and commands the tension to leave her body.

* * *

 

Mila has wondered what it would be like to kiss Georgi for quite some time. Before the incident at the rink she even thought about it. She and some of the girls went through the list of the male ice dancers and figure skaters. Of course Victor was at the top of the list. Mila feigned giggles along with the rest, but by this point, she’d met Dimitri once or twice. She’d seen Victor at hotel lobby bars with his hands gingerly resting upon the knees, shoulders, and chests of men.

When they got around to thinking about Georgi, everybody giggled, but the tone was different. Some said, “ew.” While others totally bought the princely gentleman bullshit. Mila resigned herself to somewhere in between. She decided that he wouldn’t start soft. She decided he wouldn’t be overtly demanding like the guys that she snuck out the back window to meet up with either.

She was more correct in her assumption than she’d ever know. Georgi commanded attention of all of her senses. He whispered _something_ to her, it could’ve been in French, or English, or even Russian, and she wouldn’t have known simply because the puff of air against the lobe of her ear made her feel far more drunk than wine ever could.

His lips felt soft, but he touched her everywhere. Not just were they were joined, but with one hand wrapped around her middle, and the other cupping her chin. He smells and tastes of wine. Somehow, it seemed sweeter upon his lips.

He kisses her in so many different ways. There are the kisses that start out closed mouthed, but end open mouthed, breathy, and needy. There are the long lingering kisses for which he does not allow her to come up for air.   There are short rapid fire bursts of kiss, where he tugs at her lower lip with his teeth, and plunges in with his tongue, and then pauses as if nothing had happened at all. The only proof is that she’s breathless.

There are hands everywhere over her clothes. He peels back the blanket, and he touches her everywhere: her sides, her breasts, her thighs, but it feels like nothing more than an empty promise when she’s fully clothed.

“Georgi,” she breathes between kisses. “Can we go inside?”

“Of course.”  

* * *

 

Georgi splays a long white hand across her back. It is the same hand that washed blood off of her hands almost one year ago. He runs his mouth over the lace, and savors the barest of hints that there’s nothing separating him from perfect skin except for a thin layer of lace, and an even thinner undershirt.

Making love is a performance. Although his heart aches too strongly for another at this time, he wants her to know this kind of pleasure.

Does she appreciate it? The way he looks lapping at the lace? Does she notice the way her skin feels different against dampened fabric? Does she want more? Does she want her shirt gone, and her jeans as well?

Instead of simply removing her shirt, he inches it upward. Over the waistband of her jeans, and above her navel. The skin there is red and inflamed. He pulls back, and looks at her, brow furrowed with question and concern.

“Celeste fucking pierced it for me. It looks awful, but it doesn’t hurt anymore since I yanked it out.”

Georgi cycles through dual emotions, horror and amazement at the naivety of youth.

He kisses around the flesh, and at the crest of her hips, up her sides, and then moves the shirt up over her breasts. Her bra is pink with lime green lace. He’s seen its underwear counterpart.

He peels her shirt the rest of the way off. He repeats everything that he did on her stomach and her sides on her chest, on her collar bones, and her neck, until she’s threaded her fingers in his hair, and gasping a wordless plea.

For what, he is certain that she does not know.

“Georgi,” his fingers are hooked in her bra strap. With deft hands he flicks the garment open and shrugs it down around her shoulders in a swift and fluid motion.

“Yes, Mila.”

“Take your fucking shirt off.”

He has no choice but to comply. Young women who are virile and dangerous are not to be told no. Ever. He starts at the top buttons, slowly. It’s a process, a performance.

Only to find her hands at his waist, untucking his shirt, and undoing the buttons at the bottom. Georgi is unsure if she’s over eager, or simply meeting him halfway. It’s a strange feeling nonetheless.

“Mila,” spills out of his mouth like red wine from the bottle. Tt’s her turn to rake nails across skin. The simple touches invigorate him in a way that no other lover has. He shivers at the contact.

“You have no fucking idea Georgi. Do you think I wanted to fuck all those other assholes?”

The statement takes the air out of the room. Makes his stomach drop.

She frees the final button on his shirt and looks at him. Really looks at him with expansive blue eyes that mirror the startling feeling of being out in open ocean. Her jaw set firm, brow furrowed, and pupils blown wide with lust. “When I really wanted you?”

Abruptly, the curtain is called, the performance ended.

Several unconquerable obstacles lie in their path: the three or four steps to the bed, their pants, their underwear.  Georgi walks her backwards, step by step, interrupting the process with kisses, unbuttoning jeans, undoing the zipper tooth by tooth by tooth setting her free.

He does the same for himself. Her hands mirror his, guiding his pants down his legs.

He guides her down slowly onto the bed. A thousand intimate details become apparent to him now. He decides that he will acknowledge them and catalogue them in a way that no one else has. Her hands drift around her middle and over her breasts.

 “Dearest Mila, do not hide.” He takes each of her hands into his own and tugs them away.

“God, you’re so lame.” She gasps between kisses.

He says things like that to girls all of the time. He’s never questioned whether his words conveyed how he actually felt. He’s never questioned if they were liked or appreciated.  Maybe, just maybe, there is a place where genuine feeling fades away to nothing more than artful construction. “Okay,” he swallows thickly. “Please don’t hide from me. I know that you’re beautiful. I’ve known for some time.”

She rolls her eyes failing to understand the subtle distinction.

Georgi discovers that the small wisps of hair tucked behind her ears are soft and fine. The indentation of her clavicles are paper thin, but soft like silk. Their lips slot perfectly together. Georgi truly believes that every part of making love to a woman is the very best part. Georgi believes himself to be a greedy lover, but for him giving is the same as taking. He rubs a single digit across her nipple in a slow circle. Beneath his fingers, her skin pebbles. When she’s slack jawed, and breathing heavily, that’s when he knows that it’s time to move on to the other breast.  Only after she rewards him with a sharp little moan does he move onward. He takes a darkened, swollen nipple into his mouth and moves his tongue in slow circular motions against the nub of flesh. He does this over, and over, and over again until she’s arching her back up into him.

 He kisses lower still, across the crest of her rib cage, and then lower still. He doesn’t stop at the angry red skin of her navel. He kisses lower. “Mila,” he hovers against her mound, brilliant soft red hair warm and inviting, “Can I?”

“Yeah,” she breathes with her eyes screwed shut.

Georgi settles between her legs, and works slowly. Despite the thin sheen of sweat on her body, and the blush on her chest, and the soft little moans that she makes when he moves, it’s clear that this is anct that she’s not wholly comfortable with.

Whether this is due to infrequency, or negative experience, Georgi is unsure. He doesn’t want to know for fear that the negative emotions would grab him by the base of the spine and cause him to behave irrationally.

“Mila,” he plants a kiss on her foot. Then, he peppers the down her ankle, and down lower to the inside edge of her knee. “You’re radiant.” He settles between her legs, and kisses between her thighs. Too afraid to leave them on her neck or her collarbones, he sucks small barely there blush colored marks on her inner thighs. “You command attention Mila. You have it from me now.”

“Georgi,” She writhes against his sheets. “Georgi, do you always talk so much?”

* * *

 

Georgi brings a lot of the flack that he gets onto himself. Now is one such time. What he’s promising her, and what he’s providing aren’t so incongruent that it’s upsetting or disappointing. But, he won’t stop talking between her thighs, and quite frankly, it’s embarrassing. She’s not used to anyone being down there for so long.

“Mila,” he hisses into her thigh a final time, branding the skin with his voice and his determination. Then, he parts her folds with his fingers. He looks at her with a strange smoldering ember kind of stare. Lust and benevolence, before he submerges himself completely in her.

He laps at her folds, so gently that it tickles.

She giggles; her face is flush from wine and Georgi’s teasing.

Then Georgi moves upward. He latches onto her clit, and the attention is anything but soft. Its pressure combined with a tugging sensation from deep within. She threads her fingers into his hair. She tries. She tries so hard not to tug at his hair.

Mila bites the soft fleshy parts of her hands to try to stifle the noises that she makes. Georgi makes it difficult to keep quiet. He pulls off of her clit with a sloppy _pop_ noise, only to plunge his tongue inside.

Georgi doesn’t only make her want, in the way that she seems to want all men who give her a slip of attention. She _wants._ Doesn’t feel anxious about what comes next. She believes, that if _anyone_ could make it feel good, it would be him

  He laps between the folds, lavishing attention on every single detail of her body with soft caution. Then, without warning or preamble, he breaches her with his tongue.

“Georgi!” She lets go of her hand, only to moan his name. It’s embarrassing, but it _feel_ s so good, better than fingers, certainly better than cock. It isn’t too big, and it isn’t too rough, and there’s nothing about any of this that could hurt. “Georgi,” she repeats, but there’s so much that she’d like to say. There’s so much she’d like to tell him, but all she can do is raise her hips off the bed. Tension builds within her body, only to have it break completely when Georgi moves back to her clit, and slips a single finger inside.

Mila screws her eyes shut, and her vision goes white. She feels like a phone left against a glass coffee table, shaking and loud.

Then he’s kissing her again. He’s kissing her and sinking a second finger inside. She can feel him pressing up hotly against her. The head of his cock is with precome. She hasn’t even touched him yet. “Mila,” she knows what question comes next. She knows what the answer will be. “Can I make love to you?”

“You can fuck me,” she mewls into his chest.

* * *

 

Georgi isn’t upset when it doesn’t go as planned. He doesn’t curse at her, or kick her out, or even pull out and demand a blow job when he gets halfway in, and her body tenses up completely.

Mila is _very_ upset that her body is so fucking broken that she can’t even fuck when she really wants to. There was the promise of _something_ amazing there. With each shallow thrust there was pain, but there was also a jolt of something else. Something good.

It was Georgi who pulled out. It was Georgi that asked, “Mila, are you crying?” when she tried to hide her face in the pillow and in the crook of her arm.

“No!” she insists.

Georgi lies next to her. He presses her to his chest, and threads his fingers into her hair. The minutes drag on like hours, but he still doesn’t _ask_. His cock softens against her thigh, and with it the last remaining indicator of their passion disappears.

She stops crying, but he still doesn’t ask.

He scratches lightly at her scalp while they lay together.  Then, he rubs her back while he holds her.

He still never asks.

He doesn’t ask at all. Even after they eat sandwiches and grapes standing at his kitchen island, he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask to join her in the shower, nor does he ask when she leaves the shower with matted wet hair and wearing a pair of his pajamas.

Mila knows that Georgi is strange. She was told so much on her first day at practice in St. Petersburg before she ever got the chance to make an impression of him herself. She had to wonder, what was wrong with him?

Worse still, she understood that there was nothing normal or desirable about the way she tumbled from one partner to the other. It made her stomach do flipflops. It made her nauseous in the morning before practice, and at night while she tried to do her homework.

She calls her host mom and tells her that she’s staying at Celeste’s apartment, and no, her boyfriend isn’t staying the night.

Georgi pulls back the covers for her. She crawls back into bed. “Georgi.”

“Mila,” he loops her hands around her middle.

She burrows closer to him underneath the covers. Georgi’s bed is the best. He has a big fluffy duvet, like the kind that are in hotel rooms. He has purple satin sheets that feel so good against her skin.

She inhales sharply as if to speak, but in an instant she knows that if she starts talking, she won’t be able to stop.

“Um, goodnight I guess.”

“Good night, love.”  

 


	3. Chapter 3

Mila didn’t have a plan for what happened after. She knew that she wanted Georgi. She wanted him really, really badly. She thought that because she wanted him, he’d be able to _fix her._ It was stupid, but anyone could, it was Georgi. Georgi had long eyelashes. His chest hair was perfectly groomed. Georgi touched her softly in a way that didn’t seem obligatory. Georgi rediscovered places on her body through making the ordinary extraordinary.

Her first reaction, after spending the night in Georgi’s bed, is to draw up closer. That’s what she usually does. Her body won’t do what she wants, and so there’s really little reason for any of the men to stay. She clings to them hoping that they will understand.

They stay for awhile, with the caveat that they will be repaid for their time and their patience with her body. It’s something that always remains unpaid. It hurts too much, and they lose patience, and grow irritable.

Except, Georgi doesn’t. Every day after practice is done, they walk toward the bus station. Instead of letting her go onto the red line, Georgi grabs her hand in a split second and pulls her towards his stop. Then, he lets go of her hand as soon as she walks with him. They always ride to his house in silence.

Georgi values routine, but each action becomes significant such that the simplest of behavior bears deep symbolism and becomes ritualized. He keeps a fucking skating journal to record how he feels on the ice. He has a _special_ wine glass from which he drinks a single glass of wine with dinner each night. He also has a ritual for what they do after practice. Each evening, he asks her to choose something from her English textbook.

Each time she rolls her eyes. However, she always complies. For whatever the reason, Georgi’s strange little ritual of having her read out loud while he buried his face into her sweat soaked leggings made the anxiety fade away. When he peeled them away and pressed his face _everywhere,_ she couldn’t so much as think about the fear that she was broken for forever.

Sometimes he simply eats her out.

Sometimes he takes himself into his hand and jerks off until he’s coming on the crease of her thigh or right against her folds. She’s blown him once or twice, but he’s never asked her to do it. It’s always done after she tries to unseat herself from the mound of pillows, and she all but tackles him into the mattress. 

Today is no different.

Mila’s hips are precariously balanced on a high stack of pillows. They slide against one another in purple satin cases making her perch precarious at best. She’s laying on her stomach, and she has her English reading assignment open.

Georgi is behind her, trying his very best to ruin her concentration.

“He loved-Ah,” Mila begins the page for what could be the second time, or the tenth time. At this point, she isn’t so sure. Georgi licks a long stripe from her clit to her hole, and it makes her screw her eyes shut and grab the sheets until her knuckle joints hurt.

Georgi pulled back, only for a moment.

She moved on, “Because he loved true things, he tried to explain.” She got a single line in before Georgi worked a single finger inside.

Playfully, almost lovingly he whispered into her ear while he worked the finger. “Mila dear, your enunciation is off today.”

“Geo-orgi,” she groans.

Georgi extracts his finger, and goes back to teasing her with his mouth. It’s an endless rotation of lapping, and kissing, and sucking, and nibbling. There are an endless number of combinations as he rotates through these actions in various places: between her thighs, and her inner folds, her clit, and her outer labia.

“You’re such an ass.”

“You want me to stop?”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” She hasn’t come yet, but she feels _so_ close. Her body is tense, but in a good way like a spring coiled tight and ready for release. Concentration on her reading is all but impossible.

“I like it when you’re bold Mila.”

Then, Georgi does something he hasn’t done before. He does something that no one’s ever done before. It’s something that she’s _heard_ of, but it sounds _so_ dirty.

Georgi licks an even longer stripe. From as far as he can go, across her clit and her hole, to further back still to her ass.

Mila can feel her own eyes go wide, her jaw slack. Her first, split second reaction is to jolt forward, and kick Georgi away. She wriggles forward on the pillows. She cries out in a scandalized tone, “Georgi,” but she doesn’t kick him away. “That’s dirty.”

“It feels good Mila.” He moves up her body and whispers it softly into her ear. He nibbles on the lobe of her ear, and puffs soft little breaths into her ear that send shivers down her spine. Makes her rut her ass against his hard cock, and wonder what it would feel like if she were normal.

She knows it feels good. That’s part of the problem. Shouldn’t she try to do _normal_ sex stuff properly first? Like, before doing all sorts of weird shit? Wouldn’t that just break her more? 

Shouldn’t she care?

Her mind is blank. Georgi is good at that. Wiping her mind clean with words, and pleasure, and little bits of literature that she recalls during her reading quizzes with a blush. The sound of her own heaving breathlessness, the thunder of her own heartbeat, and Georgi panting into her ear is deafening.  

He doesn’t ask, nor does he keep going. When her breathing slows, she says shakily, “okay,” because it did feel good. “Give me a second.”

“Anything.”  She can feel Georgi stroke himself behind her. She can feel the tip of his cock press against her. He could slide in at any moment, but she knows that he won’t. Not without further negotiation.

Mila’s eyes drift to the page she’d left off on, she finds the passage she’d tried to read earlier. With a shaky voice she begins, “He wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot.”

Georgi parts her ass cheeks with his other hand, while he works his cock around his fist.

“People didn't like him for telling the truth.” She read on, “they scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar. “

Only after she had a good rhythm going, got two or so paragraphs in, does Georgi abandon the hand on his cock. He parts her cheeks with both hands, and nips at the cleft of her ass. Then, he spreads his tongue wide and laps across her hole.

She stutters as he moves against her body, “Some were afraid for, some were afraid…”

With every lick, flick of the tongue and drag of Georgi’s teeth a question blossomed into her mind. _What was she afraid of_? This of course, was not supposed to happen. Georgi helped her think less, helped her fear less. She forces the thought from her mind with the whorl of Georgi’s tongue.

Mila’s attention is torn away from the book. It’s knocked to the floor as she slides against the satin pillow case, and tries to press herself simultaneously closer and further from Georgi’s mouth. It’s wonderful, and it’s dirty, and it’s so good, but it’s so bad.

“Mila,” Georgi sounded absolutely drunk as he slurred into her skin. One finger worked its way inside of her, then another. Georgi kept working his tongue against her all the while. He plunged his tongue inside her ass in tandem with his fingers in her pussy.

Every motion of his fingers, every flick of the tongue brought her closer, and closer and closer, and “Oh, fuck! Ah-“ And then she’s shaking, and quivering, and maybe crying a bit as she comes back down to earth.  

Then, he’s jerking himself off again. He’s jerking himself off with the head of his cock poking at her entrance, but never pushing inside. She knows that she could’ve taken him this time. There isn’t a shred of anything in her head. Not a pinch of anxiety, or a hint of worry.

But then she feels the hot sticky spurt of his release against her hole. He’s twitching, and he’s moaning, and he’s babbling all sorts of things that sound more outrageous than they do romantic. She’s used to it by now. She might find _some_ of it endearing by now.

Some.

Mila _knows_ that Georgi is fallibly human. She’s seen this in the way that he fails assignments. She’s seen this in the way that he’s poured everything into routines, only miss key elements in actual performances. She’s seen him cycle through lust, and love, and heartbreak over and over and over again. The cycle is varied. It can take only a few scant days, or only a month.

Mila _knows_ that Georgi is painfully and fallibly human, but for a moment he was nothing other than some kind of demigod who could fix her body and make it work with her mind. Make her come, and make her not feel broken.

He broke it in an instant by nuzzling her ear, and whispering to her three little words, “I love you.”

Mila’s first reaction, after she spent the night in Georgi’s bed, was to cling to him. That’s what she did after her body rejected a partner. She’d call, and she’d dote, and she’d lavish them with attention, while being simultaneously unable to have sex.

Georgi not only wants her, but wants her badly. The mere thought reminds her how sticky things are between her legs. It makes her heart pound in her chest. It makes her want to run far, far away.

Later on, she sits at the kitchen table, and buckles the strap on her sandals. She grabs her book bag, and accepts Georgi’s good night kiss. She says simply, “I won’t be back tomorrow.”

Georgi seems to accept this. He nods, and kisses her once more on the cheek, as if she’d only told him good night. “I understand.”

* * *

Drifting away from one another is easy. 

Georgi meets Anya, who does ice dance. Anya switched her home rink from Moscow when her partner got accepted to St. Petersburg University. As far as Mila was concerned, Anya took one look at Georgi, and Georgi never stood a chance. She walked out onto the ice during practice in full costume, skate right up to Georgi, and said, “I can’t get my costume zipped up all the way. Help me.”

Georgi loves the damsel in distress bullshit. That’s why Anya seems to get under his skin in the worst kind of way.

It doesn’t bother Mila much, even though she spends most nights walking out to the rink lobby and seeing Georgi with his tongue down her throat and Georgi’s hand down her leggings or up her shirt.

What did bother her was the fact that there was no one to walk her to the bus station anymore. What did bother her was the way that Anya dropped everything whenever her partner came into the rink, but didn’t do the same for Georgi.

It bothers Mila, but only for awhile. She meets Albert. Al for short. Al is on the hockey team, but he’s an alternate, never a starter. He doesn’t seem to mind or be bothered by all the horrible things that she knows her exes say.  Al isn’t particularly smart, they don’t have a lot to talk about, but he’s nice.

She and Georgi’s friendship didn’t disintegrate completely. Little things fell away, and their relationship was smoothed down at the edges. He still helped her with English. He still let her pilfer his bag for snacks. She still lifted him up high in the air on ice. She kept teasing him relentlessly.

* * *

Mila turns seventeen without incident or preamble. Over breakfast, Yuri tells her, “I hate you hag,” while throwing a packet at her across the breakfast table. Mila catches it, and upon closer inspection realizes that it’s a cheap piece of costume jewelry. A little Cheburashka charm on an impossibly thin chain.

Victor and Georgi buy her coffee and cake before practice. Victor and Georgi take turns telling her about their joint seventeenth birthday party. They put on an ice show on Christmas day. Georgi changed all the choreography last minute, and everything was wildly out of synch. Victor tells her with a smile, “It was quite the disaster.”

Mila can’t remember the last time she laughed so hard.

In private, Georgi gives her a journal and a nice fountain pen. It’s not a sterling silver pen like he gets some of his girlfriends, but it’s nice.

Al gets her a necklace with a real pearl. He takes her to a nice dinner too. Mila writes about it in her journal, alongside a meandering run on sentence, “Georgi always writes in a journal, and he writes about skating, and he writes about his dreams, and he writes about when and why he cries and I wonder if he got me this journal because he thinks everyone should feel as much as he does?”

* * *

In hushed tones, Yakov says to Lilia that both Victor and Georgi are going through, “the change.” From what she gathers in overheard conversations, “the change,” isn’t the same kind of change that her mother discusses when she cranks up the AC even on mild spring nights. They’re both in their late twenties. Their careers aren’t over, but they’re aware that it looms on the horizon.

“Music, costuming, choreography, it’s all well and good until he gets out onto the ice, and can’t remember a goddamn thing because he’s so busy micromanaging.” Yakov takes his index finger and presses it against his lips in a mocking gesture that too accurately reflects the way that Victor reacts.

“The other one,” he fumes. I think he’s training to run the Clinique counter at the department store, or the goddamn women’s section. All he does is go on and on and on about costuming, and makeup. His free program is a disaster.” Mila knows that’s an exaggeration. She’s seen Georgi’s free skate. It lacks polish, and is swimming in emotionality, but that’s just Georgi. His moves are clean, and his routine is ambitious.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, they need to maximize whatever time they have left. “ Then Yakov takes off his hat and screams into it.

Yakov’s words sound saner after Georgi designs his own costume for his free program. It’s an emotionally fraught affair. He’d wanted something pale pink, but then Victor showed him photos of his own free skate. The jacket on his costume was pink. Georgi scrapped it.

He went for a peach colored body suit that was meant to represent the softness of a woman’s love. Which is funny, not just because of the way that sometimes, most of the times, Georgi bring it upon himself when he’s made fun of. No, it’s funny because there’s nothing arguably soft about Anya. She’s all hard angles and furrowed brows.

Nevertheless, Georgi becomes a lace valentine on ice.

Georgi doesn’t stop there with his newfound passion for costuming. He sits He sits with a sketchpad and an entire set of pastels fanned out around him. There are costumes that are obviously for him. Body suits with linear notes that read “CRYSTALS!” and arrows that point all over the figure.

There are two piece costumes, which Victor prefers. They closely mimic the finely tailored suits that she sees in fashion magazines. But of course, the elegant charcoals, and neutral tones of navy are accented with the linear notes, “CRYSTALS”.

There are also small sexless figures crowned with a mop of golden hair. The costumes are in shades of white, and silver, and pale blue. She can’t imagine Yuri looking anything like that on ice. It would be too hard to hide his horns.

There are long ice dancing skirts on thin frames. The linear notes on these are longer, and say things like, “does not properly convey her elegance.”

His women’s costumes make her feel like she has a lump in her throat. His women’s costumes are drawn on sleek and slender models with bright red hair. There are a great deal of women’s figure skating costumes in his sketchbook.

* * *

Georgi and Victor aren’t the only ones who grow and change that season. Yakov yells about her into his hat, albeit for other reasons. Celeste gives her an undercut in her kitchen when they’re both drunk on chardonnay one afternoon. Yakov says it’s unfeminine. It’s uneven sure, but that doesn’t make it unfeminine. Mila gets her belly button pierced, but in a real shop this time. She skates around the rink in crop tops with pride. With every twinkle of her belly ring, she can feel Yakov bitching internally. 

Mila has an incredibly good season. Maybe it’s because she isn’t plagued by wave after rolling wave of nausea every day. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t hate St. Petersburg so strongly anymore. Maybe it’s because whenever Yuri pisses her off, she just picks him up and threatens to drop him. Or she’ll body slam him into the sofa and tickle him until he kicks her off. Maybe it’s because things with Al are pretty easy. They eat, and they fuck, and they don’t really talk about much of anything. No matter what the reasons are, this year is far stronger than her debut year. She takes gold at the Grand Prix final, gold at Russian Nationals, and bronze at Worlds.

* * *

Drifting away from one another was easy. It were as if their entire friendship reset completely. They hung out at the café together with Victor and Yuri almost every day before practice. They hung out on break where Mila stole glances of his sketchbook.

Coming back together should’ve been easy. After all…they like each other best when they’re both vulnerable.  

Before worlds, Anya breaks up with Georgi. He locks himself away in his room for days, and gives a very poor showing at worlds.

They’d been together for almost nine months. It was the longest she’d ever seen Georgi with the same person.

After worlds, Mila barely stepped off of the podium, only to find Al shoving a little gold ring underneath his nose. The press was still around. Flashbulbs went off, and people yelled congratulations as if she’d already said, “yes.”

Mila yells in front of Yakov, the press, her mother, and God himself an undignified, “Are you fucking kidding me?” before slapping the ring out of his grasp.

They’d only known each other for six months. It was the longest relationship that Mila ever had, but it certainly wasn’t long enough to decide that she wanted to get married.

Coming back together should’ve been easy. After all…they like each other best when they’re both vulnerable.  Instead, everything got scrubbed clean, and they existed as two people perpetually wedged between Victor and Yuri.

Except both Victor and Yuri jet off to Japan right after Worlds, and they’re left alone with one another.

Each and every day crawls by. With Yuri gone, there’s no one to hoist up high over her head. There’s no one’s locker to fill with lizards, or ping pong balls, or whatever irritating thing she can pull off before Yuri stomps into the rink. With Victor gone, there’s no one to go to for technical help except Yakov and Georgi, and well...Georgi still isn’t taking the whole Anya thing well.

He throws himself into designing a monstrous purple costume, and doing split jumps in full makeup.  She’s used to Georgi bringing a lot of the flack that he gets onto himself, but this is painful to watch. He exists perpetually in a state of not deserving what Anya did to him, and not allowing himself to heal.

They could’ve occupied that strange liminal space for the entire summer. Georgi and Mila sitting near each other on break, but never quite interacting. Georgi and Mila going thorugh their routines. Georgi lacked the drive for his own routine, but had the passion. Mila had the drive, her jumps were clean and her spins immaculate, but she had no passion.

They could’ve, but it would’ve driven Mila fucking insane.

“God, it’s too fucking quiet!” She shouts while they’re on break. No one else is in the rink, even Yakov is absent. Her voice echoes across the arena, bounces back around, and smacks her in each ear.

“You miss Yuri?” Georgi chuckles.

“No I don’t!” She insists. “Not as much as you miss Victor!”

Georgi shrugs, indicating that unlike her, he’ll admit that he misses their rink mate. “What are you working on?”

Mila can feel the blood rise to her face. The warm sting of a blush creeps across her cheeks and her chest. Georgi fucking knows. He knows, but not once in the entire nine month period he was dating Anya did he ask. Maybe she was good for something other than complaining and throwing herself across Georgi. She made him have some semblance of decency.

“English,” she replies simply.

* * *

In the back of his brain, Georgi can hear her voice from almost a year ago. She’s drunk off of one and a half glasses of wine. He’s rubbing her feet out on the balcony. “You’re such a fucking fair weather friend Georgi.”

It echoes in his mind, even while she tugs at his belt, and pulls down his zipper. “Mila,” he breathes into her neck. She smells different now, like Chanel perfume. Her kisses are searing, forceful even. She tugs at his lower lip with her teeth and leaves them swollen and bruised. She sucks a mark on his neck, as if motion is designed to say that she’s no longer the girl that he allowed into his bed a year ago. “Mila, I’ve missed this,” he pulls her back for a moment, and holds her fiery gaze.

“Georgi,” she says shakily. Her voice is barbed at the ends and soft in the middle, as if she can’t quite discern how she’s _supposed_ to feel about what he’s just said. “We both know that’s a fucking lie.” Mila mashes their lips together again violently, as if she’s determined to assert that her assessment is correct. “Just be fucking honest with me,” she demands.

Mila holds his gaze steady as she slowly sinks down to her knees. She’s wearing a cocky little smirk that he’s _never_ seen on a female athlete’s delicate features. Yuri Plisetsky is a bad influence upon her.

Smirk aside, he can’t help but look at her and feel conflicted. When _hasn’t_ he looked at her and not felt conflicted? Now, he looks at her and sees a woman, a woman who wants him. In the back of his mind, he thinks of Anya, a woman who certainly, truly must still want him too. Right?

“If you want honesty then Mila,” he wraps a hand around her own, as she tries to tug his cock over the waistband of his boxers. “I have missed this, but I’m not ready.”

Mila’s eyes go wide. Her hand drops limp. “Oh, god Georgi. Sorry, I just-“

Georgi waves his hand dismissively. “Please, just be patient with me.”

* * *

Victor takes center stage as Yuuri Katsuki’s coach. Skating blogs explode worldwide, he makes ESPN in America. Mila knows this, because she sees Victor’s face all over the screen in her hotel room when she goes to the U.S. to visit her brother.

Georgi quietly takes on more of a coaching role for her own short program and Free Skates. No one notices. But then again, it’s just her, Georgi, and Yakov. There’s no one else around to notice.

Of course, it begins with a costume.

It’s barely seven in the morning when Georgi grabs up close, cradles the back of her head, and pulls her in for a deep and passionate kiss. Mila, still addled with sleep, grips at the sketchpad that he thrusts into her hands.

“The choreography isn’t even finished yet,” Mila grumbles without so much as looking at it.

Georgi’s sketch is of a body suit, with a very short, almost absent skirt. Around the bust and the arms is a brilliant bright blue. The tone gradually gets darker, until it’s black at the hips and the skirt. Dotting the waistline, are two bright red patches. The figure’s arms are drawn so that they are spread wide, which matches the closing pose of her routine. She comes out of a spin with her arms drawn tight. As the music tapers off, she moves them outward for the final pose. Hanging down from the figure’s arms are long hanging sheets of gauzy fabric.

She wonders how he does that. Makes the shading look like gauze, be so good at so many things all at once.

“This would all be crystal if it were real.” Georgi runs his fingertip over the neckline.  “this too”, he says gesturing to the gauze strips underneath the arms.

“glitter?”

“No crystal.” He insists. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You should see if Yakov will have it made for you. As for the choreography, I have some ideas.”

Together they choose the Butterfly Waltz as music. It’s fitting, the way the long blue and black gradient gauze hangs from the sleeves of the costume. She knows that everything that Georgi does for his own performances is intentional, and so she knows that this is intentional too.

* * *

In the mornings, before Yakov is awake enough to understand what’s going on, Georgi gives her tips on how to best land her triple-triple. Her takeoff is usually good, but she can still land it in practice less than half of the time. Georgi steals touches at her hips, and at the small of her back.

Mila knows what this is about. She knows that Georgi is never single for long.

 In the afternoon, Georgi argues with Yakov on the elements of his own program. He’s deadest on an elaborate theme for Carabosse.  Yakov always responds the same way, “Georgi, what happens when you get over this damn girl? What happens when you’re stuck skating a program for someone who didn’t put this much thought toward you, even when you were in a relationship?”

At night, Georgi walks her to the bus station. Some nights, he talks about how the sunset reminds him of Anya. To be fair, everything reminds him of Anya. Other nights, he invites her back to his apartment. She tells him no.

It goes beyond Georgi needing more time. It goes beyond the fact that sometimes, she’ll catch the end of a certain song on the radio, or catch a whiff of some scent, and think of Al. It has everything to do with the fact that Mila has watched Georgi almost every single day for over two years. It’s easy to see how he loves so intensely, and so quickly. It’s easy to see that Georgi is passionate about skating. He’s the first one at the rink and at the studio, and he’s often the last to leave. He breaks down every element and every practice into thoughts, and feelings, and tries to explain everything on an emotional level, from failed performances to personal bests. It’s easy to see that Georgi is nurturing and patient. He helps her and Yuri with technical issues in their routines just as much as Victor.

They have the same taste in makeup. They read the same trashy gossip blogs, for all that Georgi likes to go on and on about art, and writing, and music. They both like red wine more than white. If they’re allowed a cheat day, they’d both rather stuff themselves with deserts than booze, or savoy foods.

Mila used to believe that Georgi could fix what was wrong with her. Now she believes that she could fall in love with him if she hadn’t spent the past two years seeing every flaw the man possessed. She’s just not up for the task of fixing him. She learned herself, that’s not how people worked. He couldn’t fix her. The whole thing makes her heart ache.

* * *

While Victor publicly and openly falls in love with his protégée, Georgi’s opinion of Mila shifts once again. Before, he felt conflicted. Mila constantly toed the line between woman and child. Although she wears a Cheburashka charm around her neck every day, her attitudes shift, as does the topic of conversation. Her childish giggle is replaced by a laugh that’s deep and from the belly.

Georgi marvels at her continuous birth and rebirth. He’s witnessed several of Mila’s and he’s emerged shocked and awed each and every time. He’s been frustrated at his own stagnation.

“Did you love him?” Georgi asks when they’re both sprawled out on the ice. They’d tried to do a lift, just for fun. Georgi skated over to Mila, and Mila grabbed him up by the waist, and his blades left the ice, and then they both went crashing down, laughing the entire way down.

Things like that make him forget Anya, just for a moment. Things like that make him feel better, just for a moment.

“It’s weird,” Mila responds. “Sometimes I miss him. Sometimes I feel sad,” she says to him. Their fingers are close enough to link, but neither move closer to encase one gloved hand into the other. “But we didn’t have much in common. He was okay in bed, but like nothing great. So, then I feel upset for feeling upset.”

Georgi raises a single brow at her, but he says nothing about her past issues with making love.

“I think I could’ve loved you Georgi,” she says while getting up off of the ice.

“Could’ve?” his heart drops in his chest.

“Yeah,” she extends her hand to him. He accepts it, and she helps pull him up off of the ice. “It’s really hard to fall for someone when you’re dealing with your own shit.” She adds as an afterthought, “When they’re always trying to get over somebody else.”

* * *

This year was _supposed_ to be Georgi’s year at Russian Nationals. That’s the only thing that she can think of when she’s ushered out of the kiss and cry after her own short program and sees him on television. Georgi recovered from the ashes of his performance in Shanghai, only to have Yuri win gold in his debut at the GPF, and have Victor return mid-season, just in time for Nationals.

Georgi ends up on the podium with an immaculate performance, a season’s best overall score, and a personal best score on his free skate. Somehow, in the way that only Georgi can snatch defeat from the jaws of near certain victory, he ends up in third.

When they talk, he seems _so_ happy. “Instead of anger, I felt controlled. I was a powerful witch, not a vengeful one. Mila,” his eyes become glassy, as if he’s a breath away from crying. “No!” Georgi clenches his jaw and balls up his fist. “Mila, I was controlled.”

“That’s wonderful Georgi. Beautiful even.”

Mila’s free skate music is slow and melodic. It gives her time to build and display her elegance and poise, but seven minutes is a long time to not be the brash and aggressive skater that she absolutely loves to be. Mila feels like molasses being poured out of the bottle, slow and viscous as she moves backwards into long sweeping counters.

Time slows down as she lands her triple-triple combination jump.

Mila lands it, and goes immediately into her step sequence. It’s a series of turns, and a long elegant Bielman that’s practically poured out of a lay back Ina Bauer.

She finishes her step sequence by holding her arms out wide, one pointing upward towards the spot light, and the other pointed back towards the audience. The position displays the sheer gauzy wings laden with crystals, designed just for her by Georgi.

* * *

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen you this happy Georgi.” Mila cards her fingers through his air. Between them, there is an unspoken statement, “despite what happened.”

Georgi still maintains the attitude and the demeanor that bronze at Nationals is the best thing ever, even though Georgi has been the runner up in Russians men’s nationals for ten consecutive years. Never gold, never bronze, always silver.

Georgi laughs, as if he can feel the unspoken part of her statement. He pauses, grabs his champagne flute, and drains the rest of the glass. “Mila, you’re not the only one that underwent metamorphosis.” Georgi brushes his lips to hers. He tastes like dry champagne. The kiss has no sense of urgency, despite the fact that they’re both naked, and she can feel the heat and the weight of his cock pressed against her thigh. Where before there was nothing but blind need between them, a summer of soft kisses and light touches and time to heal, something like gentle want developed.

They don’t need each other to fill big gaping holes in their souls anymore because they hurt, and they’re vulnerable, and they’re confused. They’re both still all of those things, but they don’t cling to one another simply because they give each other attention.

She wants him as he is: histrionic, passionate to a fault, and so in love with the _idea_ , but not always the practice of love itself.

“Georgi,” she coos into his ear. Georgi fingered her until she came. It was eerie, how after going without touching her for so long, he simply picked up right where they left off. Now she’s ready to move things forward. “Let me show you something.”

Georgi’s got the heater turned off in the hotel room, making the already cool air almost icy. Her bare skin rubs against the white silken sheets with an impossibly high thread count. Every movement against Georgi and the sheets sends a chill down her spine. Of course, her skin slides against skin and sheets and more smooth skin, over and over and over again.  

Mila pushes him down against the sheets. She wonders if his skin feels the same way that hers does. Smooth, and overstimulated, with each motion causing an electric jolt down his spine.

She straddles him, and guides his cock inside without resistance, without her entire body clenching up around him.

As she slides down his cock, it’s easy to tell, in the way that his eyes go wide while his brow furrows, that he’s a little more than turned on. Turned on, and jealous. His jaw goes lack, and then when the temporary ecstasy of her enveloping hi with tight whet heat is gone, he clenches his jaw firm. He knows that in the end, he wasn’t the first person she’d been able to do this for without pain, without tears, without apologies. She gives herself freely now, and loves every second of it, because having Georgi this way is just as good as having him finger her, or use his tongue until she’s a babbling and incoherent mess between the sheets.

It feels mutual in a way that they hadn’t been before. Not that they didn’t bring each other pleasure before, touching each other with shaky hands and kiss bruised mouths. It’s just different now. Mila rocks her hips forward, pressing Georgi impossibly deep inside. She pulls back, and makes him gasp, makes him grab at her hips and hold on. She lingers on her haunches, holding just the tip of his cock inside before plunging back down.

All the while, Georgi touches her clit. It’s not as intense, or as urgent as when he does this as foreplay. Never the less it creates the same kind of orange red ember heat inside of her.

Mila comes around his cock. Her orgasm comes in waves that lap across her body from the place where their bodies are joined to her fingertips and her toes. For a moment, the world is nothing but Georgi against crisp white sheets, soft smile and deep blue eyes.

* * *

Georgi doesn’t last long after Mila comes. How could any man? The way that she clenches, and she tightens, and she throws her hair back make it impossible. The way that her moans sound like a harp strung tight and played by angels, is bewitching, the little smile that she gives him as she rides out the orgasm, addictive.

When she’s taken her pleasure, he sits up, pushes her back, and gets on top.

When they’re finished, he takes great pleasure at watching the way his come spills out of her entrance and coats her silken smooth folds. “Beautiful,” he whispers to himself.

This of course earns him a giggle, a playful kick, and a sardonic moan, “Georgi.”

The afterglow is short lived. They’re both expected at the gala soon. Georgi showers, then dresses, and then goes about helping Mila with whatever it is that she needs. Someone to zip up her dress, someone to do the clasp of her necklace, a shoulder to hold onto as she steps into her heels.

They agree to arrive separately. Rumors always swirl at these kinds of events, and neither of them have the energy for it.

“But, we should go out afterward,” she suggests. “Just the two of us. There’s a place nearby that’s really good.”

“Alright.”  

* * *

Mila meant to keep her date with Georgi. She really did. She really wanted to. Except…Well, this really tall cutie with a beard walks up to her, and said, “my friend over there,” he gestures to Michele Crispino. He’s sour faced, and all but clinging onto his sister. She’s had limited interactions with both of them. She hears the whispers, and the rumors, but she doesn’t really know them one way or the other. “Said they could get more numbers than me. I think they’re wrong.”

Mila eyes him up and down. He’s cute. Why not?

 “So, I was wondering if I could not only get your number, but take you out tomorrow. We could go for Turkish coffee at this place…My name is Emil by the way, and - ”

Mila watches Sara Crispino unpeel herself from Michele’s side. She saunters across the room as if she owns the place, and wedges herself physically between herself and Emil. She’s never seen a woman move that way before.

“My friend here thinks he can get more numbers than me, but I know he’s wrong,” she throws Emil a wink over her shoulder. “But, I really don’t care about numbers.”

Mila can feel her jaw drop. Oh. He wasn’t talking about Michele, who from the corner of her eye she can see fuming.

“I’d rather just, you know,” she’s in Mila’s space, and she smells like Dior, and champagne. Mila didn’t know that a woman could be so cool. That’s what she is. Cool. She wants to learn how to do her makeup like that. She wants to do whatever it is that Sara wants to do. “Get to know a pretty girl.”

* * *

“Mr. Popovich?” A woman’s voice asks. “Georgi Popovich?” He turns around, and he’s met by the sight of arguably the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. She has a slim build with delicate features. It’s clear by the way she walks in heels, and the way that she holds her body she’s not a skater. But with her thin frame, she could’ve been one. Petite and perfect for throws in pairs.

Her makeup is dramatic, her clothes are sleek and undeniably expensive, but don’t stand out. She possess the criminally underrated combination of rich brown eyes, and blonde, almost white hair.

“Yes?” He says forcing his voice to sound smooth like the brandy on which he sips.

“I’m a reporter from French Vouge. We’d like to do a piece on your makeup this season?”

Georgi accepts.

Georgi accepts, and sits for the interview. She tells him there will be a photo shoot later. Georgi asks her to have a drink, and she accepts. One cocktail turns into two, and two into three. It ceases to be about business, and becomes strictly about pleasure.

Georgi forgets about his plans with Mila until his phone rings, startling him back into reality. Reality is a ballroom that is increasingly vacant as time goes on. He shudders when he sees Mila’s name on the screen.

“Georgi?” She giggles.

“Yes?” He almost responds with “dear,” automatically. But the smile his companion gives him makes it die in his throat.

“Oh, my god I’m so sorry. I wanted to go on our date, but I ran into the Crispinos, and their friend Emil. Do you know Emil?” She laughs into the receiver. “We went downstairs to the bar for cocktails, and then-Ah, fuck I’m such an awful friend.“

“Mila,” Georgi smiles against his phone. His companion squeezes his hand across the table. “It’s fine. Truly. Have fun.”


End file.
